Monster Roll: Heroic Chefs Battle Sea Creatures in Epic Sushi Horror

Monster Roll is a wildly imaginative, comedic short action film by Daniel Blank, where heroic sushi chefs face off against giant sea monsters in an epic battle with plenty of tentacle action. The ridiculously entertaining film provides a good balance of spectacular knife-wielding heroes, mixed with strong environmental themes.

Creating the Magic Hour: Opening Cómodo

Every Thursday night for many months beginning in 2010, Felipe Donnelly and Tamy Rofe invited friends and strangers into their New York City Tribeca apartment for dinner. Each week, six people were offered seats at the long table in the couple’s small one-bedroom home. Donnelly created gourmet Latin-inspired dishes, while Rofe kept the wine glasses full and the guests laughing.

The couple began hosting the weekly dinner parties shortly after they got married, using them as a way to enliven their social lives and give Donnelly an outlet for his cooking ambitions. They also started a blog, called Thursdays at Worth Street, to keep track of recipes and the unique mix of people each dinner attracted.

After some time hosting the increasingly popular dinner parties for strangers in their apartment, the NYC Department of Health took notice and shut them down. Undaunted in their desire to follow their hearts into the world of professional cooking, Tamy and Felipe decided to open a restaurant in Greenwich Village. Opening Cómodo is a documentary short film that tells the story of creating Cómodo, their new little restaurant on MacDougal Street in the village.

The Grand Luncheonette: Sadly, No Place Left at the Table for 42nd Street Diner

Fred Hakim, last of the old-time Times Square hot-dog vendors, has died at the age of 83. Mr. Hakim’s family owned a hole-in-the-wall hot-dog counter in Times Square, which was the last of its kind when in the 1990s the city began condemning dozens of establishments like it in order to revitalize the area. The Grand Luncheonette was a seven-seat, 250-square-foot piece of Edward Hopper streetscape on West 42nd Street, which Mr. Hakim’s father had opened in 1941 and wryly named the Grand Luncheonette.

The Grand Luncheonette lived on 42nd Street for 58 years, grandly offering its greasy ambiance to the passing crowds in Times Square, proudly wrapped in shining chrome beneath the rotted marquee of the old Selwyn Theater. Mr. Hakim tried to keep the place open as a sort of living museum-like tribute to the golden age of Times Square’s hawkers, strippers and honky-tonks. But New York’s urban planners had other ideas, and after a two-year fight, he finally was evicted on Oct. 19th, 1997.

Writing about the demise of the Grand Luncheonette, a New York Daily News journalist pessimistically concluded: “This is bigger than 42nd Street, bigger even than the Disney Corp. This is about New York being colonized by The Gap and Banana Republic and Starbuck’s and all the rest. If new and improved Times Square is any indication, the standard for Italian cuisine will be the Olive Garden chain.”

Thank You for Smoking

Thank You for Smoking is a series of images by New York photographer Joseph O. Holmes, which shows people hiding away to enjoy a smoke. But looking at these pictures, you might not even notice some of the smokers until the last second. The photographer who captured the images in this collection caught some very interesting stories of furtive smokers. But having to sneak their smokes in an atmosphere of such clandestine secrecy…really, have we come to that, guilt?

Hambuster: The Bloody Revenge of Crazy-Mad Hamburgers!!

Holy $%*&@!!! Supinfocom, the famous French animation school, has given us some ridiculously fun and outrageous student short films, but Hambuster may just take the prize as the most gleefully bugnuts of them all!

Hambuster is a wickedly funny six-minute 3D stereoscopic short film, co-directed by five students from Supinfocom Arles. Now, anyone who spends time eating their way around restaurant-obsessed America knows that when it comes to food, we are now living in a brave new burger world. America is awash in hamburger options, from business-lunch burgers, to chic nightclub sliders, to great hamburger creations to eat while you sit on a bench in the park, or even better, delicious burgers delivered piping-hot right to your seat while you watch a ballgame.

Maybe today you just might like having yourself a good juicy hamburger for lunch, while sitting in a peacefuly quiet place in the neighborhood park. But what if your lunch doesn’t like that idea at all, goes absolutely crazy-mad and decides to attack you? Out in the street everyone can hear your loud and bloody screams, but honestly who cares?

The Hushed Melancholy of New York’s Empty Restaurants

The Empty Restaurants of New York is an emotionally moving collection of photographs by the Dutch photographer Wijnanda Deroo. Deroo’s work depicts the hushed melancholy of vacant interiors found in the cafes and restaurants from four of New York City’s five boroughs. Instead of actual people, there is the presence of people who have been there before and who might be there again. Despite the lack of people present in Deroo’s work, there exists a tangible presence of human experience and activity, manifested in the subtle clues left behind from a once vibrant history. Her alluring use of color and composition invites the viewer into these hauntingly empty spaces with emotive power, reinforcing the perspective that beauty can be found in the least likely of places.

Photos of the Day: The Back of the House

Back of the House is a behind the scenes look at the world of fine dining by photographer Michael Harlan Turkell. This collection of photographs reveals restaurants’ often unrecognized subcultures; it presents the artistry, diligence, precision and camaraderie that endures throughout the chaos.

The vivacious celebrity chefs who are prominent in today’s pop culture give the impression that their work merely springs from their own energetic imaginations. In reality, their product is the work of a large team of people whose efforts and skills too often go unrecognized and unappreciated by both gourmands and the general public. Turkell’s project celebrates these people’s hard work and captures perfectly the atmosphere of the back of the house.